On Mortality

Foreword

(This article contains major spoilers for "I Want to Eat Your Pancreas". I recommend looking into any of its four releases before reading this. It will make sense regardless, but the story warrants your attention.)

"I Want to Eat Your Pancreas". This is quite the brilliant work which I just finished last night (at time of writing), and it's been nagging at me as these things so often do. Common wisdom has taught me that writing down thoughts and feelings can help one better understand them. I am, therefore, going to toss these writings to the void that they may provide some refuge or insight to those struggling with similar thoughts.

I picked up this comic (manga, as it's colloquially known) as an art study for planned illustrations in my current manuscript. However, it almost immediately captivated me in a way stories rarely do.

It follows the relationship between Haruki Shiga and Sakura Yamauchi, a dying girl with an unnamed pancreatic illness. The name is reference to a superstition in some ancient cultures that a person could eat the organ of an animal to cure their own sickness. She says it as a joke to the protagonist, but it becomes a focal point of the story.

The book starts out with Haruki talking about how he missed Sakura's funeral, and how he wonders if she even saw his last text. Yes, we're starting in media res and she's already dead. Then the story flashes back to everything leading up to her death. It is with this justification that I so boldly declared it impossible to be hurt by the story. She's dying, and we know she's dead by the end, so this is little more than a tragic romance... Right?

How naïve of me, as a writer myself, to not expect a twist.

Summary

But let's go through the story. The pair meet in the hospital, where Haruki finds Sakura's diary, not so subtly titled "Living with Dying". From it, he finds out that she's sick and only has about a year left to live. She catches him reading it and quickly explains that he's the first person outside of her immediate family to know she's sick. She hasn't even told her best friend, Kyoko, because she wants to be able to enjoy the rest of her time alive as if there was nothing wrong.

Still, she confides in him that it's nice to have someone she can talk about the truth with. Someone that she doesn't have to lie around. This marks the beginning of their relationship. She volunteers as a helper at the library to be around him more, and they start going out. They both only acknowledge these as friendly hang-outs, despite the general undertone being closer to dates.

The pair growing together isn't all flowers though, even if we could set Sakura's illness aside. It both causes Kyoko to resent Haruki, and leads to a wealth of gossip amongst their classmates. Haruki, a self-professed loner, doesn't really mind, except for the fact that Sakura is dragging him out of the house.

Eventually, they go on break from school and she invites him to take a train trip without telling him where they're going. It ends up being well out of their town, more than just a day trip to his chagrin. After arriving and exploring their destination, there's a mistake with the hotel, forcing them to share a room. Sakura is bubbly as always, almost mockingly celebrating the fact that they'll have to share a bed. Haruki spends his time that night moping about his situation while she takes a shower.

Then there's the first true brush with mortality. She asks him to grab her face wash from her bag, and he finds it bathing in a cocktail of prescription medications. He'd asked about her health multiple times by this point, but only now does it set in:

She's dying.

He's shaken from this experience. If you understand mortality, it's probably not a huge shock to you. We know from the beginning that she's already dead, so the fact that she's at the end of the metaphorical road isn't exactly a secret. But this response isn't rare in those who've never confronted the cold reality of death. More on that in a bit, but let's continue.

They play truth or dare, and Sakura reveals that she's scared of dying. Haruki wants no part in that conversation since he's still a bit shocked from seeing her drugs. They sleep for the night, spend the next day hanging out some more and return home.

After getting back, things get weird for Haruki. He finds himself accosted by someone, with his slippers being thrown in the trash and the entire class whispering about him. He stays stoic, ignoring the attention as he has been. Sakura invites him over after school to get a book and they end up having a little spat. Haruki leaves in a hurry, shocked by how he reacted. On the way back down the street, he encounters a classmate who happens to be Sakura's ex-boyfriend. They have a little argument about Sakura, which results in Haruki getting punched. Fortunately, Sakura chased after him to clear things up. Upon seeing what he did, she more or less disowns her ex. She and Haruki return to her house, make up and he leaves with the book.

This leads into the summer break. Not so much of a break for Haruki, since he has summer school. He expects Sakura to show up, but she never does, and it's revealed that she's been checked into the hospital. When he gets there, she quickly assuages his fears by saying her parents just got worried about her numbers. Presumably something to do with her blood sugar.

They spend some time hanging out at the hospital, Haruki and Kyoko's visiting time often overlapping which leads to some conflict. Sakura ends up having to stay longer than planned, and Haruki (reasonably) gets worried again. As before, Sakura brushes it off and tells him it's no big deal. Though, she does show how flattered she is that he cares that much for her. She's finally broken the hard shell of the isolationist.

On the day she's scheduled to be discharged, they agree to meet at a café. While he waits for her, they text back and forth. She says she might be late because she wants to look nice for him. He makes a joke about her being unhealthy, and she asks him to compliment her to make up for it. Then, he sends his last text to her:

"I want to eat your pancreas."

This is what started the book. That opener where he talks about being unsure if she ever saw his final message. It's a big compliment coming from a guy like him. Something approximating, "I really want you to get better", in a playful way. But he receives no response. She never even shows up.

The next morning, a news broadcast comes on and Haruki's fears are realized. Sakura is dead.

Brilliant Writing

"What!?" You may be asking if you didn't heed my advice from the beginning. "If she was so close to death, why would the hospital discharge her!?"

That's the thing: she wasn't.

Of course, she had her estimated expiry date cut in half, but she was still set to live at least a bit longer. Here comes a little thing known in literary circles as "Chekov's Gun".

Throughout the story, we hear mention of a series of murders going on around Japan. Crime is on the rise and women are being killed. See where I'm going with this?

That's right. She was murdered on her way to meet him at the café. All that drama around her illness, all the talk of what she wanted to do before she died, all the heartache over her inevitable and untimely demise. All of it for her to be cut down just as easily as you or I could be. This is the crux of the article, but if you'll entertain me I'd like to glow about this writing for a moment.

This is perhaps one of the best examples of setup and payoff I've seen in any single piece of fiction. Generally, the setup is quite obvious even if the payoff isn't predictable. An example would be "Back to the Future", where we are buried in seemingly meaningless details throughout the beginning. These become important near the end of the story and everything comes full circle.

In this story, however, the setup blends seamlessly into the background. With everything else going on, the mentions of murder seem like white noise. Just worldbuilding or filler dialogue. Aside from a couple passing lines on the main pair's train ride, the only mentions of the killings are on the news. I just figured it was something for the broadcast to be about.

But maybe I'm just oblivious. I didn't even realize that the notorious "last message" had been sent by the time I'd passed that page because I was so drawn into the story.

Either way, I think this is the best way to experience it. Much like our protagonist, I knew the death was coming and I was still shocked.

More than anything, this story made me feel a similar emotion to a couple others I've seen (also from Japan, funnily enough). With the others, I felt it was something lacking in the stories themselves. I knew this was different, though. There's nothing missing in the writing, but something deeper.

This is proof of a well executed character death. So many shows, books, movies and video games fail to do this correctly. For one reason or another, characters you're supposed to care about are quickly forgotten once they die. I would hazard to say it's done wrong more often than it's done right. This is especially true when writers commit the damnable offense of using magic or time travel to bring back the dead.

Here's a tip for killing your characters: Punch a hole in the reader's heart. They shouldn't just be a little sad about a character dying, they should feel like they've actually lost someone.

Mortality

Humans are remarkably fragile creatures. Considering our origins, it's actually amazing we've survived this long. The way I've always put it is: "You're never more than 6 inches from death". Usually, it's less. Something pierces your chest and takes out your heart? You're done. Catch that you have cancer too late? Dead. Then there's the very case we have in this story: Wrong place, wrong time.

This causes the most tragic deaths. People "taken too soon" or "cut down in their prime". It doesn't even have to be a maniac with a knife, it can just as easily be a drunk driver or something falling in the wrong place. If we always registered on a conscious level how dangerous it is to be alive, none of us would be able to leave the house. Some obsessive-compulsive people experience this very thing, and react in the way described. And it's not really an unreasonable reaction. Sure, it's statistically improbable, but guess what? You only need to get unlucky once.

If we've learned anything over the last few years, it's that there is a not insignificant portion of the population that either doesn't understand this, or refuses to understand it. I don't care much for the politicization of COVID, and I understand perfectly well that high-risk people have a damn good reason to be afraid of it. But it is undeniable that a lot of low risk people were (and continue to be) way too worried. I'm not even talking about a fear of spreading the virus. I mean those who wore masks alone in their car. The people that refused to go outside or be within ten feet of anyone. Hell, I heard of a woman that wore a mask to bed in her own house because she was so scared.

This is what happens when you cannot comprehend your own mortality.

Sakura mentions something in the book which I thought was quite interesting. It's what I've harped on for a long time. While they're talking about what Sakura wants to do before she dies, she says this to Haruki:

"I mean, you must have things you want to do before you die, too … But you're not doing those things right now, are you!? Even though you could randomly die tomorrow, same as me. So in that sense, there's no difference between us."

This is somewhat foreshadowing, but no sense pushing that point further.

What I really want to get at here is that nobody is necessarily closer to death than anyone else. All things being equal, of course health problems shorten your estimated lifespan. But as I said earlier, we're fragile creatures. Happenstance can kill us all, sick or healthy, young or old. Even when you're dying, you still have room to die faster.

So what's the moral of this depressing monologue? Live life to its fullest. Not quite, "Live every day like it's your last", because that would lead to some very poor decisions. But every day is a gift. Don't waste your time, and don't take anything for granted.

Think like this: If you only had a year left to live, what would you do to be remembered in the best light possible?